His critics in France acknowledged his talent but clucked over Sargent's youthful blend of impressionistic dash with Old Master color and light, calling it daring at best -- and unhappily muddled when compared to the prevailing academic standards of the late 1800s. They also fussed over his unconventional subject matter, branding several paintings with the unenviable labels of "strange" and "exotic."

Such squawks of disapproval were mild, however, compared to the social and critical uproar that greeted one particularly striking but notoriously sensual portrait. So ugly was the reception for "Madame X" when it appeared in 1884 that it took more than Sargent's genius -- and the painterly repositioning of his beautiful sitter's smolderingly languid shoulder strap -- to resurrect his sinking fortunes as an artist.

Here, too, however, Sargent fought to redefine himself in a completely unpredictable fashion. Instead of focusing entirely on high-profile works, he frequently turned to the benign, often belittled genre of children's portraits, where he created images of such penetrating insight and beauty that they did far more than revive his sputtering reputation.

As demonstrated by the arresting likenesses found in "Great Expectations: John Singer Sargent Painting Children" -- which runs at the Chrysler Museum of Art through May 22 -- Sargent transformed the entire field through the sheer power of his talent. He also cultivated this seemingly unpromising realm to produce some of the era's most extraordinary and provocative portraits -- no matter what the age of the sitters.

"Every other year at least, Sargent was careful to show a childhood subject in an effort to capture the public's attention -- and counter the perception that he was a painter of the sensual and exotic," Chrysler Chief Curator Jefferson C. Harrison says.

"But he was never sentimental. He was never academic. He painted them in such a way that his avant garde tendencies were very well-received. The best of these works rank among the great portraits painted in Paris during the 1880s. They're great portraits -- period."

Why Sargent pursued such an unlikely solution may never be fully known. He left no explicit references to the tactic in his papers, says Brooklyn Museum of Art curator Barbara D. Gallati, who organized the exhibit.

Yet unlike most of his peers, who generally dismissed children's portraits as the province of either female artists or lesser male talents, Sargent embraced the work -- and he made it one of the most important parts of his career before giving up portrait commissions in 1908. He also showed considerable interest and skill in the field from early on, beginning with a striking portrait that he produced while still in his teens.

Swiftly painted, this intimate likeness of his 5-year-old sister Violet offers a close, unexpectedly spontaneous glimpse of a little girl frozen in mid-movement -- almost as if she had been distracted from the dullness of posing for her brother, Gallati says. And her expression clearly shows that Sargent is already capable of capturing the character-revealing spark that normally eludes most painters of children's portraits.

"People go to exhibits expecting to see the great works -- and we think we can satisfy them with many of things we have here," Gallati says. "But we also have some surprises -- like this tiny early image of Violet. It's just a wonderful painting."

Whether Sargent consciously fell back on such youthful achievements during his time of trial cannot be determined. He could, however, recall another instance of success in the children's portrait he submitted for his debut work at the National Academy of Design in New York in 1879.

The sharp outdoor light, bright colors, sketchy brushwork and seemingly unimportant subject matter of "Neapolitan Children Bathing" completely defied the conservative aesthetics of the time, Gallati says. Nevertheless, this apparently guileless study of four naked little boys lolling on an Italian beach utterly charmed the critics.

"The directness of it, the frontality of it, the immediacy of it -- it's really an astounding painting," Harrison says. "He paints those little boys with the same dash, the same genius he shows in his controversial portraits of adults. But he uses the subject matter to slip that avant-garde technique in under the critical radar."